White House Details A `Conspiracy' In Media

January 10, 1997|By William Neikirk and Frank James, Washington Bureau.

WASHINGTON — The White House widely distributed a report Thursday describing an elaborate theory of "conspiracy commerce" in which right-wing enemies of President Clinton and his wife manage to get anti-Clinton stories reported in the mainstream press.

Compiled in 1995 by the White House counsel's office, the report laid out a "media food chain" in which conservative activists feed conspiracy theories through conservative publications and the Internet that are picked up by major newspapers and broadcast outlets.

FOR THE RECORD - Additional material published Jan. 11, 1997:Corrections and clarifications.A story Friday on the White House counsel's report on conservative news media incorrectly identified the Western Journalism Center. The Tribune regrets the error.

Press secretary Mike McCurry defended the report and denied that the theory reflected a White House "bunker mentality," characterizing it as a way to alert reporters that they were being manipulated.

"It's fair to say we prevented erroneous information from being reported and we saved some journalists from putting a lot of crazy stuff in," he said.

But Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution, called the White House report "bizarre, paranoid and irresponsible."

"Anyone who has spent any time with the Washington press corps knows that this is not how reporters get their information," he said.

Former White House special associate counsel Mark Fabiani produced the report with the help of the Democratic National Committee. While much of it is in the form of press clippings, a 2 1/2-page summary said conspiracy theories and rumors about the Clintons originate with "well-funded right-wing think tanks and individuals" who underwrite conservative newsletters and newspapers.

The report, which the White House gave to several news organizations more than a year ago, cited Richard Mellon Scaife, conservative millionaire and owner of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, saying that he uses the "$800 million Mellon fortune which he inherited to fund a virtual empire of right-wing newspapers and foundations."

Stories circulated by the Washington Journalism Center, the American Spectactor and the Pittsburgh Tribune Review are posted on the Internet, where they are picked up by British tabloids or U.S. "right-of-center mainstream media" such as The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times and the New York Post, the report said.

It said congressional committees look into the story, which gives it "the legitimacy to be covered by the remainder of the American press as a `real' story." The report cited a "blow-back" strategy, in which conservative groups feed material to British tabloids that are then picked up by U.S. papers.

Before he left the White House, Fabiani's job was to answer reporters' questions and handle White House "damage control" during the Whitewater affair. He ridiculed Whitewater conspiracy theories.

To back up his conspiracy theory, Fabiani's report cited the case of Helen Dickey, an aide in the Clinton household. Dickey was quoted by the London Sunday Telegraph as telling an Arkansas state trooper that White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster killed himself in the White House parking lot, not in a park where his body was found.

Even though she denied the story in an affidavit produced in the report, the Sunday Telegraph story was circulated by the Western Journalism Center, the Tribune Review, then moved to the Internet, the Washington Times and New York Post.

Wesley Pruden, the Washington Times editor in chief, said "the notion of a right-wing press conspiracy or any other kind of press conspiracy is so nutty that it's tempting to put it down as something in the category of Elvis sightings and flyer saucers on the White House lawn."

But Pruden added that "there's something ominous in anything that sounds like an enemies list and, despite White House protestations, that's what it sounds like. The White House obviously doesn't have a clear understanding of how news gets into newspapers."

Hess disagreed with the comparison to former President Richard Nixon's notorious Watergate-era enemies list. "That was under the table," he said. "There's a big difference here."

Much data gathered in Washington comes from interviews and government documents, Hess said. To suggest news comes from a conservative think tank "somehow has it all backward. It flows in the other direction."

McCurry told reporters that the White House's aim was "to refute some of the very aggressive charges being made fallaciously against the president, most often on the Internet, coming from a variety of kind of crazy, right-wing sources."

He noted with irony that the report suddenly became big news because it was first mentioned in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal on Monday. The Washington Times obtained a copy of the report and put it on its front page Thursday, McCurry said, adding that it was "proof-positive of the kind of cycle that we're talking about here."